Changing Course

Every armed force has played a key role in our nation's response to the terrorism of Sept. 11, but no service stands to be changed more by that day, over time, than the U.S. Coast Guard. Its commandant, Adm. James M. Loy, discusses those changes with contributing editor Tom Philpott. Loy's comments have been edited for space.
by Tom Philpott

What did the events of Sept. 11 do to the Coast Guard?

They had a dramatic impact, but they also showed the value of having in the nation's arsenal a multimission maritime service. Our ships, boats, helicopters, airplanes, and people are all multimission. All that my field commanders had to do was say, "Take a left and go to port security." Folks in the midst of counternarcotics work, fisheries enforcement, [or] alien-immigration work refocused on what the nation needed.

I was on the phone at 10 minutes after nine that morning with Secretary [of Transportation Norman Y.] Mineta getting permission to exercise his domestic call-up authority. Over the next few days, we activated a third of our Selected Reserve.

The immediate issue for the Coast Guard was controlling the movement of what we call "high-interest" vessels so our ports couldn't be turned into targets. The reracking of mission priorities is now very clear. Fifty percent to 60 percent of our operating expense now is maritime security; on Sept. 10, it was less than 5 percent.

Since Sept. 11, we have attempted to figure out both the value and vulnerability of our maritime sector. Today I am 100 percent convinced that among [potential] targets, ports and waterways are the most valuable and most vulnerable.

Why?

Our ports are responsible for up to $870 billion of our gross domestic product each year. Ninety-five percent of U.S. trade moves through our ports and waterways. Besides that we have 95,000 miles of coastline, a 3.5-million-square-mile exclusive economic zone with oil wells, ocean minerals, [and] the bounty of the seas. All of that is part of the nation's wealth. Responsibility for that lies fundamentally with us [as well as] with other federal agencies.

Do you have intelligence that terrorists plan to strike maritime interests?

Without divulging specifics, which are classified, there is no doubt in my mind that al-Qaida cells, and Osama bin Laden personally, have had notions of maritime capability in their portfolio of nasty things to offer this country.

And, of course, they did attack the USS Cole in 2000.

The force-protection implications of that—for Navy, Coast Guard, and commercial assets worldwide—[are] very real.

How do you strengthen maritime security?

We have forged a five-goal scenario. The first is to maintain public confidence that the maritime sector is secure. The remaining four goals are more specific.

One is to control the movement of high-interest vessels like oil tankers, lpg [liquefied petroleum gas] carriers, chemical and hazardous material carriers. Also cruise ships with their thousands of passengers. And rogue vessels that, like jetliners, might be turned into weapons and aimed at an lng [liquefied national gas] terminal or an aircraft carrier or an abutment of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Can you control all those vessels?

Not 100 percent. There are not enough resources in the Coast Guard today. We have to use risk-based decision making to take the probable targets and weapons off the table. That's what's behind programs like sea marshals, which came out of San Francisco early on. Coast Guard personnel meet ships at the sea buoy and validate everything on board—that people who are supposed to be in control are in control, that the crew matches the manifest. Ships now must give us 96 hours' notice, rather than 24, before arrival.

How far out do they board?

That depends on the geography of the port. In San Francisco, it's about 14 miles west of the entrance to the bay. Pilot boats carrying commercial pilots now also bring out Coast Guard petty officers to inspect. For some shorter runs, we actually will escort or establish a moving security zone around the vessel with Coast Guard utility and patrol boats.

Another goal is presence. It is enormously important to be much more visible to the American public and maritime world. We have beefed up our port security units and augmented the capability on patrol boats to be more evident. There's value in that for both deterrence and response capability.

A fourth goal is to inventory critical infrastructure in ports and waterways and protect them. In this we relied on our instincts in search and rescue: "Send it all, then release what you don't need." We surged on Sept. 11 and now have settled back to what we call the "new normalcy,'' a higher security profile [that] must be sustained.

Our final goal is to reach out to anyone who can contribute to maritime security. That includes trade associations, port authority people, harbor pilots, the chamber of shipping. The failure on Sept. 11 was one of awareness. Over a decade of post-Cold War activity, we allowed our awareness of what goes on around us to dry up a little. We have to put energy into that. It's about intelligence, keeping your eyes and ears open for things out of pattern. If you're a fisherman on the Grand Banks and see something out of the ordinary, be conscientious enough as a citizen to pick up the radio and report it to the Coast Guard. If you're a pilot boat on your way out to a ship and you see something out of character, report that.

What new legal authorities do you need?

We already have authority to press on various regulatory issues. We pushed through the notice-of-arrival regulation in three days, a record for [D.C.]. Some others I'll mention are thoughts rather than actual plans. For example, we might want to mandate vessel and port facility security plans, which we would review and exercise. Some facility security plans are in place, but most vessels focus on ship safety and environmental protection. We might add a security chapter.

Do you envision every LNG ship, for example, having armed personnel to protect the vessel?

Absolutely. And to the degree piracy is an issue in some corners of the world, we could have international standards. Eighty percent to 85 percent of ships and cargo we have to be concerned about [are] foreign-flag.

Another issue is automated identification technology as a carriage requirement on approaching vessels. With a transponder, we would know where they are and what they are doing. If transit is to be from the sea buoy to this point and take a left, we could actually monitor that. We're thinking about even making that an international effort.

We have the same kind of security concerns for passenger ships and their terminals as we do for airports, with baggage checkers and the like. We could federalize some dimension of that work.

From an agency perspective, the most crucial goal is sharing information and fusing databases to have a fuller picture of what's happening. When a ship leaves Lisbon [Portugal] for Charleston [S.C.], it involves a vessel, its people, and its cargo. The vessel piece we probably have more information on than anybody else. We might know, for example, that its previous port of call was Barranquilla, Colombia, a hot spot for the drug trade, and a red flag would go up.

If we were in a mature fused-database environment, however, we might also have ins [Immigration and Naturalization Service] or State Department information that the second mate and the third engineer have drug records. From the U.S. Customs Service, we might learn they are suspicious of a container placed on the vessel at Barranquilla. So now my guys, looking at the 10 vessels coming to Charleston that day, would see three or four red flags instead of just the one and zoom in on that vessel as one to scrub good before we let it in.

How close are you to that data merge point?

As we speak, our Intelligence Coordination Center in Suitland, Md., is maturing its capability with terrific contributions from ins and the visa locker at [the State Department]. The container cargo piece is the "hole" in our maritime awareness. Sixteen thousand containers arrive daily, on average. Less than 2 percent do we actually open.

A system could be designed for point-of-origin control, using U.S. inspectors in ports where they pack that container, with a sealing process and in-transit transparency so that when it arrives in the United States, we would have great confidence it has not been reopened. But it's a customs challenge. I want to be the first to support what they would need. It ought to be teed up as one of the most significant issues Gov. [Tom] Ridge [director of homeland security] is worried about.

Since Sept. 11, Ridge and some members of Congress have discussed merging the Coast Guard with other agencies responsible for border safety. What's your reaction?

Retired Sens. Gary Hart and Warren Rudman, as the chairs of their [blue ribbon] commission, recommended that the Coast Guard, Customs, fema [Federal Emergency Management Agency], U.S. Border Patrol, and ins be gathered together in a homeland security department. Three things I say about that:

One, there are probably 40 different agencies, including the fbi, you could associate with homeland security. Why those five? It's something to be thought through carefully.

More important, Governor Ridge needs to be given time to sort out how he is going to get his arms around this [homeland security] monster. Form should follow function. Let's get the functionality right first and then allow organizational implications to follow.

Third, in the middle of a crisis is probably the worst time to reorganize. If the Coast Guard were in an organizational upheaval today, on top of everything else we're trying to do, something would give. There may be organizational implications down the road. I want to get the maritime security piece right first.

What did Sept. 11 do to your other missions?

We took a lot of energy out of missions enormously important for the country, including those with national security implications. We have backed away from our very significant contributions to the drug war at the worst time. It's quite clear that profits from illicit drug trade are a funding engine for international terrorism. The same is true for illegal alien migration. We have got to be smarter than that. The difference is resources—head counts and boats and such.

So the Coast Guard needs to grow?

I've offered to Secretary Mineta a three-year game plan to build back to the size we were in 1993. From '94 to '98, we "streamlined." I don't mean that in a positive way. We took more than 4,000 people and $400 million out of the annual capability of this organization. Now is the time to replace that. Homeland security is the mission du jour, and I don't challenge that. But we must go back to those other national security missions as quickly as we can.

How would you resize the Coast Guard and its budget?

We're [about] 36,000 personnel today. The three-year plan would build us up to a little more than 40,000. That's not only reasonable, but also it's mandatory to support what we're doing and need to do in the maritime sector. We're a $5.2 billion organization today. Raising that by another half to three-quarters of a billion dollars a year is not out of the question.

How have you redeployed assets since Sept. 11?

We've doubled, tripled operating hours of coastal assets including buoy tenders, patrol boats, utility boats. We've relocated many from stations, as we enter the winter boating season, to augment assets in ports and harbors. We activated our six port security units—mostly reserve manned—and deployed them to important ports like New York, Boston, San Diego, and Puget Sound, Wash. Other reservists are augmenting in a pre-orchestrated manner, joining teams and group offices, adding to their competency, man-hours, and capability. All those added harbor patrols don't come free. Until we can backfill the active duty assets—literally recruit new sailors and get them there—we will have to have a lengthy reserve augmentation to hold on to this higher security profile.

You visited the ruins of the World Trade Center. Can you share your impressions and what that might have done to your resolve?

I've worn this uniform for more than 40 years. I've been to Vietnam. I've gone through many crises for the nation. It doesn't take much to kindle my resolve. But I can tell you I have never been moved more personally, with perhaps the exception of the birth of my children, [than by] what I witnessed in south Manhattan. I have a picture of it here, on my wall, which I see every time I go out my door. I want it there for the balance of this challenge to remind me hour by hour, minute by minute, what has been done to our nation.